Corpus Delicti
by akaeve
Summary: Written for Decades and Eras Challenge for NFA. Set 1833 before the Anatomy Act. Edinburgh Medical School.


"Εν τω δεσμa4; η ισχa3;ς" is ancient Greek and it means "Into (or with) the bond (is) the power.

1833.

Dr Mallard stood in the Post Mortem room of the University. That would be the University of Edinburgh Medical School. It had stemmed from the Royal College of Physicians, to become one of the most modern, and trusted institutions, of its kind in the country. But it had a dark past.

He looked at the latest offering that had been brought in. He found it so much more peaceful now, to know that now, the poor souls had died legitimately. When he thought back before the Act, that would be the Anatomy Act passed just the year before, he remembered how it used to have been. Oh yes, the Act now provided the University with the necessary corpses. They would come from the workhouses, or the prisons, or just unclaimed. Sometimes the family would give the body for medical research knowing that the burial would be paid for by the University.

Dr Mallard thought back over the last 10years. Oh yes things had definitely been different and not at all legal. He picked up the scalpel, made a silent prayer and sliced into the chest……………….

1822

Dr Mallard, as he had become to be known, grew up near Little France, a suburb of Edinburgh. It was where Mary Queen of Scots' courtiers had settled, around 1550. Donald McPherson, born 1799. He had been brought up in Joppa, a village near by. He had always had an interest in medicine and had helped the doctors of the time with the sick. But it was why people died of their sickness. No not just how people died, but why. He vowed as a young man to train as a medical anatomist, an examiner, to find out how the body worked, and what killed, or should that be what they died from.

Donald McPherson, but it was difficulty for the French to pronounce and over the years, he had lived there looking at the poverty and providing basic medical care he had become Dr Mal ade, Dr being what he was and malade being the French for illness, as his patients pointed to where they hurt. Some had tried to say Donald but it came out it didn't quite come out right. So it had stuck. He had become Dr Donald Mallard.

**1824-1828**

Dr Mallard had been working with the renowned Dr Robert Knox. Knox was a lecturer and a 1st class surgeon. He also was a zoologist and anatomist, but this was soon to be his down fall.

In 1825, a young Charles Darwin, he was only 16yrs old, arrived in Edinburgh, as a callow young medical student. He realised early on that medicine was not for him. But he relished the lectures given by Dr Knox on zoology. He spent hours in the University Museum beside the stuffed animals and birds. The gruesome anatomy lectures and pre-anaesthesia surgery demonstrations left him traumatised.

The medical facility was one for debate. The early days of anatomy and natural sciences fuelled many an afternoons discussion. Dr Mallard would listen to the theories, the discussions on the body. He wished he could find out more.

The young Darwin, he spent his time exploring the beaches on the Firth of Forth, examining tiny creatures under microscopes. He would meet, a strange work colleague of Dr Mallard's, in the rough ale houses of the Leith Docklands.

****

The Docks. Notorious for drunkards and loose women. A certain low life lived there. The Black Swan an alehouse full of pirates, prostitutes, persons who defied living, a proper pot of life. The docks, if the press-gangs didn't get you, then the body snatchers would. Life was as cheap as a bottle of gin. Jenever. Spirit, distilled with juniper berries. Juniper Green the village along the road from Leith. That was how it got it's name. It was the water that was dear, it caused the sickness. The alcohol, it was an anesthetic, a cleanser, a source of barter. The sailors returning from months at sea. The girls in the taverns all too willing to accommodate them in more ways than one, and to relieve them of more, than just their money.

The mariners who came ashore. There was one, a certain Captain Gibbs. He plied the North Sea between Holland and the East Coast of Scotland. He brought with him the gin, in his ship, the Miss-Barbara. Some said it was named after his mistress. Others said his mistress was the sea. He was a pirate, a mariner, an entrepreneur.

He had met Dr Mallards assistant one foggy night. The gas lighting emanating from the alehouses, giving a ghostly orange glow along the front. The horse draw cabs trundled over the cobbles.

He watched in horror as he saw a young fellow being jumped on. Only this fellow gave back more than was expected. Some gut feeling told Gibbs, that this was no ordinary boy. He watched as "He" slashed out with the scalpel, but something was not right. Gibbs went to the lads aid. She had been grateful. She offered him repayment, Gibbs smiled and gently declined.

"But hey, you could buy me a drink." Gibbs requested. "And tell me why you are dressed as such."

Abie, smiled.

****

Dr Mallards' assistant. He had asked for a student. Someone from the poorer areas Newhaven……Granton…..Leith. He had been given a strange effeminate lad. He was tall. Taller than himself. He had a couple of tattoos on his wrist and neck. He had long slim fingers, on which he had a couple of rings. Skull and crossbones. He drank down the docklands. He spoke in a deep gruff voice. He had impressed him with his knowledge of microscopes, he mentioned Darwin.

"Ah yes, remember him, a nice boy but strange. Always knew he would go far." he had replied, now looking at this creature that stood before him, "Yes strange." beginning to think they all looked like that down there.

The student had asked Dr Mallard if he knew Gibbs.

"No, never had the honour of meeting him". he really wondered about the company this child kept. There was definitely something strange there, but he had busied himself in the microscopes and bits of bodies that were brought in.

****

Abie, as she called herself, Abigail she had been christened. She wanted to be a doctor. But no you were not allowed. You were a woman. She thought back to Dr James (Miranda) Barry, who had graduated from the University in 1812, there was something odd about him. No, it would be many years to come, before women were "accepted" into the medical fold, only to be told they could not graduate. It would be a long time before the pioneers of The Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women would be founded. Abie kept herself to herself. She had asked Dr Mallard one day if he knew Captain Gibbs.

"No. Never had the honour of meeting him." but he wondered how Abie knew him.

****

Bodies. They were numerous at the weekends. Those who had fallen foul of the alcohol, or the press-gangs, or over stepped the kerb into the water of Leith. Oh yes there were plenty of bodies. But like all good things, the bodies began to dry up. Anatomy was becoming the medical godsend.

"How can we preserve life if we do not know how the body works." the Doctors had argued. So some scrupulous beings, began to steal from newly dug graves. The cadavers or grave robbers, or as they wished to be known in high places "The Resurrectionists." Others had discovered a more lucrative business……….murder.

****

The Theatre Royal, at the east end of Edinburgh. A noble Theatre for many of the new plays. It was at the top of Leith Walk, at the East of Princes Street, over the North Bridge from the old town and the morgue.

The two oldest cemeteries, the Carlton Gate and the Canongate, they had crypts but sometimes they were just buried, they were just over the road behind. Many a chorus girl had had a Gentleman there, but many a chorus girl had died. The authorities turned a blind eye in most cases until the murders.

****

It started in 1827, Dr Knox was suddenly getting more bodies than usual, and they appeared in very good condition. William Burke and William Hare, two Irish immigrants from Ulster, had come to Edinburgh to work as labourers on the then New Union Canal and took up lodgings with Maggie Laird and Nell MacDougal, women of low virtue, in the sleazy district of the West Port. Their boarding house was a doss house for alcoholics and the displaced. People who would slip through the net. It was going well until one body turned up. A young man with a limp, named James Wilson, he was called "Daft Jamie", he was a bit of a dafty, a simpleton. The trouble was everyone knew Jamie.

****

It had been Abie, who had first recognised the body. She had been in one of Dr Knox's lectures. She like Jamie. He often went down by the harbour. She told Dr Mallard.

"Are you sure it was "Daft Jamie?" Dr Mallard had asked.

"I think I'm sure, but he was missing his feet and his head. But I remember the tattoo. He wanted one like mine."

"Ahh yes." as he looked at Abie. "I suppose I should tell someone, but who." as he carried on with his work.

****

Dr Mallard need not have worried. It had come to peoples notice that Jamie had been missing. Even his mother had called at the boarding house, only to be told he had moved.

"Last I heard he was down the dock's. Maybe he's been press-ganged."

It had been two lodgers who found the last body. They, had been out and come back drunk. They found a body under the bed. They went to the police. But when they returned with the police it was too late Burke and Hare had removed the body and sold to Dr Knox.

The four were arrested. William Hare had married Maggie Laird, and as husband and wife, they turned King's evidence, against Burke and Nell MacDougal, they got immunity from prosecution. The police questioned Dr Knox, but nothing was brought against him or the University. All the fingers, so to speak , pointed to William Burke. The police surmised at least 13 to 30 bodies, over a period of a year, had been killed and dissected. Burke was only prosecuted for the one. The last one, Mrs Docherty. The one, the two lodgers had found.

****

The trial of William Burke was short. He was found guilty and hanged on 28th January 1829. The ironic thing was, as a hanged body, it was given to the University for "useful dissection". Dr Mallard had carried out the post mortem, in front of a huge crowd of students, all interested in the macabre person, who had over the months provided the cadavers.

****

As Dr Mallard cleaned the skeleton, little would/could, he imagine that the very same skeleton would be still seen in the University Museum. The very museum, that Darwin had spent many hours looking round. But the strangest thing of all, would be the "leather pocket book" which had been made. Some of Burkes skin had been tanned and made into a cover. This bizarre object, relic would still be observed, abet by the very brave, some 180 years into the future. Preserved forever, as a reminder of The Edinburgh Medical Schools' grizzly past, but how it had helped shape the future for modern anatomy.


End file.
